Towards an open library of relational metadata: the experience of RePEc Research Papers in Economics

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Towards an open library of relational metadata
the experience of RePEc (Research Papers in
Economics)

• Thomas Krichel
• 2003-11-07

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who is me?

• I was an economist.
• I was a leisure digital librarian.
• NetEc since 1993
• RePEc since 1997
• I am "just another Perl hacker"
• I am a visionary
• but I'm not like St. John the Baptist

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who is he?
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he is "St. IGNUicus"

• A humoristic creation of Richard M. Stallman
  (RMS)
• RMS is the father of the free software movement
• a geek
• a visionary
• St. IGNUicus shows an emphasis on the moral case
  for free software, rather than the business case

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moral case and business case

• Other folks in the free software movement avoid
  the "f" word
• free can mean cheap
• cheap can mean bad
• They stress the business case of free software
• They use the term "open source software", (OSS)

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RMS and us

• Amen, I tell you we librarians need to learn
  more from the OSS movement.
• We need to make the concepts coming of free
  software more a part of our business.
• Let us look at a key concept free software.

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free software according to RMS

• Free software comes with four freedoms
• The freedom to run the software, for any purpose
• The freedom to study how the program works, and
  adapt it to your needs
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can
  help your neighbor
• The freedom to improve the program, and release
  your improvements to the public, so that the
  whole community benefits

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what has this to do with us?

• Just replace free software with free information.
  Libraries are about free information.
• But the analogy is not quite as simple.
• When we talk about free information, we usually
  mean things that we can freely read (download).
  free as in 0
• We do not usually mean free information as
  information we are free to do things with. Free
  as in freedom.

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moral and business

• There is a moral case for free information.
• We rely on it.
• There is a business case for free information.
• We need to make our own.

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we rely on the moral case

• The citizen should be informed
• Individuals in the organization should have free
  access
• This is how we justify resources given to us.
• Often, members of the community who pay get
  privileged access.

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from moral case to business case

• To form the business case for free information,
  think of "free information" as "freedom to do
  things" rather than 0.
• Thus libraries can make a crucial business case
  for them as agents who transform information.
• Recall that there are whole industries out there
  that produces free information.

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Now for something different

• RePEc is an example for an Open Library.
• An Open Library is loosely defined an application
  of the OSS principles to libraries.
• vague
• in the making
• but has some history
• Looking at RePEc will fix ideas.

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History

• It started with me as a research assistant an in
  the Economics Department of Loughborough
  University of Technology in 1990.
• a predecessor of the Internet allowed me to
  download free software without effort
• but academic papers had to be gathered in a
  painful way

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CoREJ

• published by HMSO
• Photocopied lists of contents tables recently
  published economics journal received at the
  Department of Trade and Industry
• Typed list of the recently received working
  papers received by the University of Warwick
  library
• The latter was the more interesting.

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working papers

• early accounts of research findings
• published by economics departments
• in universities
• in research centers
• in some government offices
• in multinational administrations
• disseminated through exchange agreements
• important because of 4 year publishing delay

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1991-1992

• I planned to circulate the Warwick working paper
  list over listserv lists
• I argued it would be good for them
• increase incentives to contribute
• increase revenue for ILL
• After many trials, Warwick refused.
• During the end of that time, I was offered a
  lectureship, and decided to get working on my own
  collection.

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1993 BibEc and WoPEc

• Fethy Mili of Université de Montréal had a good
  collection of papers and gave me his data.
• I put his bibliographic data on a gopher and
  called the service "BibEc"
• I also gathered the first ever online electronic
  working papers on a gopher and called the service
  "WoPEc".

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NetEc consortium

• BibEc printed papers
• WoPEc electronic papers
• CodEc software
• WebEc web resource listings
• JokEc jokes
• HoPEc
• a lot of Ec!

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WoPEc to RePEc

• WoPEc was a catalog record collection
• WoPEc remained largest web access point
• but getting contributions was tough
• In 1996 I wrote basic architecture for RePEc.
• ReDIF
• Guildford Protocol

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1996 RePEc principle

• Many archives
• archives offer metadata about digital objects
  (mainly working papers)
• One database
• The data from all archives forms one single
  logical database despite the fact that it is held
  on different servers.
• Many services
• users can access the data through many
  interfaces.
• providers of archives offer their data to all
  interfaces at the same time. This provides for an
  optimal distribution.

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RePEc is based on 330 archives

• WoPEc
• EconWPA
• DEGREE
• S-WoPEc
• NBER
• CEPR

• US Fed in Print
• IMF
• OECD
• MIT
• University of Surrey
• CO PAH

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to form a 209k item dataset

• 119,000 working papers
• 87,000 journal articles
• 1,000 software components
• 600 book and chapter listings
• 3,500 author contact and publication
  listings
• 7,300 institutional contact listings

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RePEc is used in many services

• BibEc and WoPEc
• Decomate Z39.50 service
• EconPapers
• NEP New Economics Papers
• Inomics
• RePEc author service

• IDEAS
• RuPEc
• EDIRC
• LogEc

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describes documents

• Template-Type ReDIF-Paper 1.0
• Title Dynamic Aspect of Growth and Fiscal Policy
• Author-Name Thomas Krichel
• Author-Person RePEcper1965-06-05thomas_kriche
  l
• Author-Email T.Krichel_at_surrey.ac.uk
• Author-Name Paul Levine
• Author-Email P.Levine_at_surrey.ac.uk
• Author-WorkPlace-Name University of Surrey
• Classification-JEL C61 E21 E23 E62 O41
• File-URL ftp//www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/
  pub/RePEc/sur/surrec/surrec9601.pdf
• File-Format application/pdf
• Creation-Date 199603
• Revision-Date 199711
• Handle RePEcsursurrec9601

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describes persons (HoPEc)

• template-type ReDIF-Person 1.0
• name-full MANKIW, N. GREGORY
• name-last MANKIW
• name-first N. GREGORY
• handle RePEcper1984-06-16N__GREGORY_MANKIW
• email ngmankiw_at_harvard.edu
• homepagehttp//post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty
  /
• mankiw/mankiw.html
• workplace-institution RePEcedideharus
• workplace-institution RePEcedinberrus
• Author-Article RePEcaeaaecrevv76y1986i4p
  676-91
• Author-Article RePEcaeaaecrevv77y1987i3p
  358-74
• Author-Article RePEcaeaaecrevv78y1988i2p
  173-77
• .

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describes institutions

• Template-Type ReDIF-Institution 1.0
• Primary-Name University of Surrey
• Primary-Location Guildford
• Secondary-Name Department of Economics
• Secondary-Phone [phone]
• Secondary-Email economics_at_surrey.ac.uk
• Secondary-Fax [phone]
• Secondary-Postal Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH
• Secondary-Homepage
• http//www.econ.surrey.ac.uk/
• Handle RePEcedidesuruk

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what do open libraries do?

• Identify records
• Relate identified records
• These actions require human control.
• They prepare for assessment of performance.

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key to success

• Have a small group of volunteers
• Disseminate as widely as possible
• Demonstrate to authors and institutions that it
  works for them.
• institutional registration
• author registration

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institutional registration

• It started by one sad geezer making a list of
  departments that have a web site.
• I persuaded him that his data would be more
  widely used if integrated into the RePEc
  database.
• Now he is a happy geezer and one of our three
  crucial volunteers.

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author registration

• It started when funding allowed us to hire a
  crazy programmer to write an author registration
  system.
• system went online as "HoPEc" in late 2000.
• has been renamed "RePEc author service" (RAS)
• recent grant from OSI allows for a rewrite and
  expansion.

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RePEc author service

• RePEc document data has author names as strings.
• The authors register with RAS to list contact
  details and identify the papers they wrote.
• This is classic access control, but done by the
  authors.
• In a ranking of 800 most important economists,
  400 are registered with RAS.

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authors' incentives

• Authors perceive the registration as a way to
  achieve common advertising for their papers.
• Author records are used to aggregate usage logs
  across RePEc user services for all papers of an
  author.
• Stimulates a "I am bigger than you are"
  mentality. Size matters!

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KEY idea 1

• RePEc attracts a community of users and
  contributors
• The community itself is the focus of attention
• RePEc describes the living rather than the dead.
• Forget about documents!

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KEY idea 2

• Forget about users!
• Disseminate widely
• Users will come through Google anyway.
• And Google loves RePEc services
• puts RePEc services top when the query consists
  of the name of an author

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open library idea serials data

• Serial level information is a crucial component
  of academic library data.
• Idea build and maintain free serial records.
• Two ways to build
• Use volunteers and collect in a decentralized
  way.
• Make an expensive central collection, disseminate
  well, charge for record changes later.

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another open library idea law

• Much of the legal texts are de jure free.
• De facto there are two companies who have
  comprehensive collections and charge a lot of
  money for the free information bundled with
  proprietary information.
• Our moral case calls for a replacement!
• (it will also create jobs for us)

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free legal open library

• Have all laws and cases
• online as text
• identified related
• Have citation metadata, so that legal citations
  can verified be while composing case data.
• Registration procedure to verify the integrity of
  data.

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open library idea II drugs

• Collect data on the composition of all drugs
• drugs composition reported by drug companies,
  using open archives
• drug components documented by the governments,
  using an open archive
• Open library brings the two together!

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Am I crazy?

• Money does not make the world go round. Ideas do.
• When RMS proposed a free replacement for UNIX in
  the early 80s, most people dismissed the idea.
• Today it is reality!
• Similarly, when I started to work on RePEc a
  totally free and improved AI dataset in 1993,
  nobody gave it a high probability to succeed.
• It is a reality!

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obstacles to open libraries

• lack of imagination entrepreneurship
• inability to form alliances
• user-centered thinking
• document-centered thinking
• technical competence required
• OAI PMH
• XML and XML Schema
• Unicode
• the "C" word

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what I do for open libraries

• Create an open library for library science the
  rclis (reckless) dataset.
• Create a supporting organization
• the open library society.
• co-workers welcome!

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http//openlib.org/home/krichel

• Thank you for your attention!